Don't Forget About the Stay-At-Home Dad

My father used to walk me through the woods to stand beneath the tall, wise trees. I'd wrap my arms around their trunks as he taught me how to recognize them by their leaves—the oaks, the walnuts, the sycamores—and I grew to love the way the wind blew through them, how the Earth felt at their roots beneath my feet.

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He would take me out on the water at sunset, too, and point out all the birds—the osprey, the cormorant, the great blue heron. He taught me how to steer a boat, to lift a motor, to tie the bowline knots. When we got home, he'd play the piano and tell me stories, sing me songs to help me fall asleep. He'd bounce me on a knee and give me a few salty sips of beer. For all of childhood, it was he who packed my lunches in little brown paper bags, who drove me to the bus stop in the morning, who took me out for ice cream after school.

My father, since Day One, was a stay-at-home dad.

My father, since Day One, was a stay-at-home dad. Around the time that I was born, there were 1.1 million of them, mothers making up some 90 percent of all the parents who stayed at home, and yet for some time, I had no idea we weren't the norm. A painter by profession, he had a studio upstairs and so my mom had the freedom to take her job in town. In the mornings, we made art together: me with my colored pencils, him covering a canvas in a landscape of paint.

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Mom, who'd left before we'd even woken up, would get home around 5. We'd run to her ankles as she walked in the door and hand her spatulas and seasonings as she made magic on the stove. We'd eat at the old wooden table with the windows wide open, the crickets and cicadas playing us a symphony outside, the candlesticks dancing along in the breeze. Every night, whatever she made, however it turned out, Dad would say it was the best thing he'd ever eaten.

I know that I was lucky. I know that most fathers go to work. I know that they stay at the office late. I know that many fathers are absent, and that they're there only a little, and sometimes not at all. I know that not all dads who stay at home do so by choice. What I do know, though, biggest of all, is what having him there, stay-at-home dad or not, meant.

It meant time.

The man and his presence are important. Study upon study has shown the effects of a father's time with his kids. When it's little or none, the chances of depression, suicide, alcohol and drug abuse go up, while grades, self-esteem and the likelihood of a full and flourishing life go down.

If quantity, like quality, matters, then there's hope for the next generation of kids.

Stay-at-home dads have been on a slow and steady climb, and by the time I reached my twenties, the number had nearly doubled to 2.2 million, increasing their share of at-home parentage to 16 percent. Fathers now spend nearly three times more time with their children than they did in the ghost-fatherera of 1965. They put in about as much time with their kids as their mothers do, and many of them wish they put in more.

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They put in about as much time with their kids as their mothers do, and many of them wish they put in more.

Fathers will continue to fail, of course, and many will continue to be absent, too. The majority still go to work. Not all women want to bread-win. But boys and girls are growing up with a more visible and accessible dad. With it comes a new definition of fatherhood, one molded and defined by the children they observe and teach and let capture the nuances of him. They have time to realize some of his strengths and to recognize some of his weaknesses and to love him, if they so chose, for or despite it all.

And no longer will their bond be bound solely by the confines of an occasional sports game or school play; time allows fathers to know their children, too. He can teach his kid how to work hard and be courageous in more direct and open ways—through books, old records, experience. From talking, finally, about friends, about family, about his own father, and each other.

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And, boy—what a dad can teach his daughter, too. He can teach her about the trees and the animals and the rope knots on the boat. Those first sips of beer and how to drive before she should have been. He can teach her how a woman should be treated, like he can for his son, and similarly, and even if it makes him blush, he can even teach her about love.

Time allows fathers to know their children.

He can teach his daughter how to be strong and adventurous and brave, just like a son. He can teach her to always know who she is and where she came from; what she deserves and what she's worth, which, to him, is everything.

Which is exactly what my dad taught me.

He walked me out into the fields on clear summer nights and connected the dots between the Dippers. We caught fireflies in our hands and peeked between our fingers at their little glowing pulse. We threw them back up into the thick warm air and watched as they flew away. Time was slow. I thought I'd stay a kid forever.

We listened to the wind between the trees and marveled at their age and all they'd seen. Because of him, I look at light differently.

We were lucky. Time was something we had. We stood beneath the great chaotic void of the sky and found patterns in the stars.

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